Shadow Of My Former Self

Shadow of My Former Self One day when I was 19, I took a ride on a motorcycle and lost what was then the greatest part of becoming a woman. In the collision that cost my friend Mark Robinson his life, I was thrown 20 feet into the air and hit a telephone pole, shattering my pelvis and breaking both my legs. Three weeks later I survived to become what is termed by the medical community, a “hemipelvectomy.”Shadow of My Former Self is the story of the first year after the “impact,” from the morning of the accident through hospitalizations, amputations, and artificial legs, to my return to classes at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Trying to reconstruct the wild girl who grew up Catholic in a Jewish and Italian town north of Boston, the book includes flashbacks to Revere, Massachusetts. I focus on body image, beauty, grief, and the attempt to recreate my shattered self.I will be putting up chapters of the book periodically, so keep checking back to see more! This book will eventually be in print, so this version which will take us through more than a third way through the text will become a teaser for the book in print, which is too expensive right now, but if we are making money from Have Crutch Will Travel, others may like it enough to get this writer some money to advance my publishing business.

Here to Chapter 11, we have skipped six chapters. I did this to buy time to alter the sequence of info and themes in those skipped chapters. Also, as I’m ultimately hoping this will lead to advance orders for the book to pay for its printing. Please give $10, 20 or 30 as you are able, and you will be put on the list and will see the finished book within a year from when I finish this section of the book, which covers the period I was briefly home before returning to school.